The GovTech Startups Transforming Europe, By Country

PUBLIC outlines the most exciting GovTech startups transforming the European public services from HealthTech to CivicTech, from Austria to the UK.

Across the world, the modern state is undergoing an extraordinary transformation. A new generation of technology is changing the way countries – and, indeed, local and federal governments – collect taxes, provide healthcare, distribute welfare, keep citizens safe, manage public transport, and deliver all kinds of key public services. In a surprisingly short time, the entire way a state engages with its citizens will be different. Driving this change is the rise of GovTech – new technologies applied to public services, designed for local and central governments. The phenomenon is happening globally, in countries large and small. In particular, the last few years have seen a remarkable growth in the European GovTech ecosystem – in this article, we outline the European GovTech startups that are transforming public services, delivering smarter, more efficient solutions for European citizens.

🇦🇹 Austria – Enpulsion, a spin out from University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt, has developed a unique propulsion technology optimised for launching small satellites into orbit. The company has raised 3.4 million euros to date — 1 million for European Space Agency research and 2.4 million from private sources and the European Commission.

🇧🇪 Belgium –Cubigo is an online platform that connects community staff, residents and family members to improve the experience of senior living communities. This includes a single platform for managing dining, maintenance, transportation, communication and other activities – which not only improves the lives of senior residents, but also delivers more efficient community workflows and lower operating costs.

🇩🇰 Denmark – Monsenso is a HealthTech startup that provides a platform to support individuals suffering from mental health problems by creating a ‘triple-loop care‘ that engages clinicians, patients and carers. Its mHealth solution encourages individuals to engage in self-care, helps carers play a more active role in their treatment and provides clinicians with a remote monitoring tool that assists them to make clinical decisions.

🇪🇪 Estonia – Skeleton Technologies has developed a technology that enables companies to reach significant energy savings in a wide variety of industries ranging from automotive, transportation, and maritime, all the way to renewable energy, power grids, industrial applications, and aerospace. They are currently working with the European Space Agency and several Tier 1 automotive manufacturers.

🇫🇮 Finland – Huoleti is a crowdsourcing care platform that supports patients who have just been diagnosed with a severe illness. Its mobile app allows citizens to build peer support networks and to invite carers and loved ones to help them on an everyday basis.

🇫🇷 France –Fluicityhas found a way to deal with the crisis of trust between citizens and politicians. They have created an app that aims to bring to life citizens’ projects and ideas by enabling a dialogue between elected officials and citizens. They have been operating across local governments in France and Belgium: for example, 12% of the population in Vernont are using Fluicity, which led to the repair a faulty public lighting within a few hours of being notified to the city via the app.

🇩🇪 Germany –ParkHere is a spin-off of the Technical University of Munich that has developed a self-powered parking sensor. They have estimated that 30% of road traffic is due to drivers blindly driving down streets hoping for an open parking spot: a problem that their solution aims to fix. They are currently in operation in many cities around Europe, including Germany, Switzerland, Spain and France.

🇬🇷 Greece –novovilleis a citizen engagement platform that now operates in 40 cities across Europe. Citizens are provided with an app through which they can apply for services, report problems, and, most importantly, share their opinions. This information feeds through in real-time dashboard controlled by the council, allowing councillors to detect and solve problems quickly and efficiently, whilst seamlessly updating the citizen who has filed the report. Novoville won the Digital Citizenship Challenge on the Urban Challenge, an open call competition PUBLIC organised with the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street.

🇮🇸 Iceland – Ankeri’s mission is to change the global shipping industry by fostering more transparency and collaboration between ship owners and charterers. They developed a cloud-based platform that allows them to examine fuel performance and try to improve it together, leading to a more efficient transportation since customers pay for fuel.

🇮🇪 Ireland – The HireLab is working with governments to give them freedom to manage their full hiring process, through an online platform with engaging candidate portals, flexible workflows, skills matching and hiring tools to provide a unique experience for their target talent market.

🇮🇹 Italy – Comuni-Chiamo is a cloud solution to that aims at improving city management: from waste management calendars to communicating with citizens through an app. The startup is already working alongside 98 mayors for 4 million citizens across Italy.

🇱🇺 Luxembourg – Because air pollution is the 4th highest risk factor for death globally and by far the leading environmental risk factor for disease, Footbot developed a device that makes pollution visible and then makes it disappear. It provides an air monitoring technology that allows the measurement of indoor pollution, leading to improved air quality in indoor public spaces.

🇳🇱 Netherlands –Teqplay is disrupting the port logistics industry by providing real-time data management to port managers, who are then able to carry more efficient operations, through increased collaboration along the logistical chain.

🇳🇴 Norway – In 2014, a Norwegian public investigation report was published on the use of interpretation services in the public sector that demonstrated a widespread use of interpreters without proper qualifications, which creates confusion and misunderstanding. In light of this problem, TikkTalk has created an open marketplace for interpretation services, that brings more quality and fairness to the trade – for both the interpreters and their clients. They work with public sector organisations to improve translation processes in courts, hospitals and asylum centres.

🇵🇱 Poland – Ifinity provides beacons based tailor-made technology to cities and public spaces around the world to let people digitally interact with reality through their mobiles. For example, it is placing thousands of beacons around Warsaw to facilitate mobility for the visually impaired. The applied technology integrates with existing electronic systems at public offices and buses allowing them to navigate their way and providing them with remote services.

🇵🇹 Portugal –myPolis is working with local authorities across the country to improve citizen engagement in an intuitive way through an app that allows any citizen with a smartphone to vote on political decisions, by gamifying the process.

🇷🇺 Russia –Welltory is a HealthTech startup based in St. Petersburg that has developed an app that measures your stress & energy levels by analysing your heartbeat with your smartphone. It helps hard workers increase performance and productivity by monitoring stress and energy, finding optimal work and sleeping schedules, etc.

🇷🇸 Serbia – A member of this year’s GovStart cohort, Strawberry Energy aims to reinvent the urban landscape, by creating smart and solar-powered urban furniture for smart and sustainable cities. They are now present in more than 30 cities (17 countries) all around the globe with clients such as: Ford, Cancer Research UK, Canary Wharf, Crown Estate, Orange, UNDP, Eon, EWZ etc. In London, there are Smart Benches in Southwark, Islington, Lewisham and Canary Wharf.

🇸🇪 Sweden – Mapillary is a global network of contributors who are working together to build better maps. Anyone can join and collect street-level images, using simple tools like smartphones or personal cameras. With computer vision, it connects images across time and space to create immersive street-level views and extract map data.

🇬🇧 UK –Adzuna is a search engine for job ads that lists every job, everywhere. Recently, thanks to our GovStart GovStart accelerator, Adzuna was successfully awarded a £2.5m p.a. contract with the Department for Works and Pensions to power Universal Jobmatch: the Government’s job board.

📲 Get in touch with us on Twitter if you know any other exciting tech startups transforming public services, across Europe!